'This Week' Transcript: Panetta

June 27, 2010

Page 13 of 15

CHANDRASEKARAN: Not only not energize his base, it's won him no
Republican support. The most concerning quote uttered by General
McChrystal is not anything in those Rolling Stone interviews, nothing
about the vice president, about Holbrooke. The most alarming thing
for Washington that he said recently was in Europe, a couple of weeks
ago, when he acknowledged that it's going to take far more time to
convince the Afghans that international forces are there to protect
them. That's a fundamental prerequisite to counter-insurgency.

TAPPER: In Kandahar. And he said that the Kandahar operation
was going to be delayed because of that.

CHANDRASEKARAN: If you've got these guys who don't want us to be
helping them out, helping to protect them, how do you do this?

TAPPER: Right now, President Obama is in Toronto, and I want to
move on to the G-20 conference, because there's been a big debate
there between President Obama and many in Europe about stimulus versus
austerity. Spending more money to help the economy versus focusing on
debt. Here's Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TREASURY SECRETARY TIMOTHY F. GEITHNER: There's another mistake
governments, some governments have made over time, which is to, in a
sense, step back too quickly. What we want to do is continue to
emphasize that we're going to avoid that mistake, by making sure we
recognize that, you know, it's only been a year since the world
economy stopped collapsing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Rajiv, what does this debate mean for the president's
agenda?

CHANDRASEKARAN: Well what this debate that played out over the
weekend in Toronto means is that the president now faces opposition
not just among Republicans on Capitol Hill to additional stimulus
activity but he's facing it from his European allies who are also
concerned about growing government debt. Certainly the fallout from
the Greek debt crisis reverberating around continental Europe. The
Germans, the British are all very concerned about this and the
president, Secretary Geithner, wanted to get out of Toronto, they
really haven't gotten in terms of a commitment among the G-8 allies to
do more of the second round of stimulus sending.

TAPPER: David, you know, you and I have been on these trips.
The president really likes the G-20 more than he likes the G-8. He
kind of thinks the G-8 is an anachronism.

SANGER: He does because the G-8 is filled, by and large, with
older economies, Europe, Canada, Japan, all of whom are deeply in debt
at this point, none of which feel that they can afford this kind of
stimulus. And so when he brings in the G-20 for all the difficulties
of managing a group that large, and the G-20 could barely come to an
agreement on when to break for lunch, there -- the one advantage they
bring is that there are big, growing economies there -- China, Brazil,
India, and these are countries I think that the president feels over
time he can manage to help stimulate the world economy in a way that
he'll never get out of the old G-7.